Andrew Willis Garcés put together a nice piece about the alliance between Colombia's indigenous Barí and the campesinos of ASCAMCAT in the Catatumbo region of Northeast Colombia, which was recently published in Leftturn magazine.
"To reach one of the Colombian indigenous tribes that overlaps with Venezuela, you first need to get to the town of Honduras, in the municipality of Convención in the Norte de Santander department. It is accessible by a precarious, one-lane dirt road hugging the eastern spine of the Andes Mountains; average speed, about 12 mph. From there you walk or, if you’re lucky, ride a donkey past acres of relatively new coca fields and forest being cleared for that or pasture. After four hours you’ll arrive at the state Catatumbo-Barí Forest Reserve and the small village of Bridicayra, one of the few remaining indigenous Barí settlements."
Read the rest of the article here.
Tuesday, June 23, 2009
Monday, June 22, 2009
People and Power: Chiquita Banana on Video
from Al-Jazeera English. Some clips of San José people! Qué bello...
You can check out more videos here.
You can check out more videos here.
Monday, June 8, 2009
Saturday, May 30, 2009
Arabic Course 101
I finally got into learning about the roots of Arabic words. All the other previous grammar was hard, but boring. This is hard, but exciting!
There is one word that wraps up what the Arabic language is like:
القاموس (al-kamuus), which means "dictionary".... but it also means "ocean" because it comes from the root قمس (kamasa) which means "to immerse, to soak, to steep". My mind is just blown away. What an amazing language.
Also, to say "I feel lonely", you can say "أشعر بالوحيدة " (ash'ur bil-wahiida). أشعر comes from the root شعر and means "to know, to feel, to perceive" (among other meanings). الشُعور (as-shu'uur) means "knowledge or perception".
and مشترك (mushtarak) means "collective, combined, or common"....
Stay with me...
If you put them together, you get: الشعر المشترك (as-shu'uur al-mushtarak), which literally means, "perception or knowledge of the collective" = "SOLIDARITY".... oh shitttttttt!!!!
And coming from the same root as مشترك (which is شرك , or "to share, participate, associate"), you have the word اشتراكية , which means.... drum roll... "socialism".
Well, I think that's the same root in English, so that isn't so exciting. Who said socialism was exciting anyways??
Maybe anarchy...
There is one word that wraps up what the Arabic language is like:
القاموس (al-kamuus), which means "dictionary".... but it also means "ocean" because it comes from the root قمس (kamasa) which means "to immerse, to soak, to steep". My mind is just blown away. What an amazing language.
Also, to say "I feel lonely", you can say "أشعر بالوحيدة " (ash'ur bil-wahiida). أشعر comes from the root شعر and means "to know, to feel, to perceive" (among other meanings). الشُعور (as-shu'uur) means "knowledge or perception".
and مشترك (mushtarak) means "collective, combined, or common"....
Stay with me...
If you put them together, you get: الشعر المشترك (as-shu'uur al-mushtarak), which literally means, "perception or knowledge of the collective" = "SOLIDARITY".... oh shitttttttt!!!!
And coming from the same root as مشترك (which is شرك , or "to share, participate, associate"), you have the word اشتراكية , which means.... drum roll... "socialism".
Well, I think that's the same root in English, so that isn't so exciting. Who said socialism was exciting anyways??
Maybe anarchy...
Thursday, May 28, 2009
New Blog Added to List
Hey everyone,
I just added a new blog, called 3arabawy (don't pronounce the "3" please, it is standing in for a letter that we don't have in English). Pretty good, written by an Egyptian Marxist, mostly in English. Finally, some different thinking. There is a good photographic essay about the Mahalla Intifada, the April 6th, 2008, uprising which started in the burb of Mahalla (close to Alex) and touched of a general strike across the country for higher wages... check it out here.
Also recently here in Alexandria, a bunch of Muslim Brotherhood folks were arrested after Egypt claimed that Hezbollah was infiltrating Egypt and getting arms to Gaza through Egypt. Unfortunately, I can't follow the news so well, and no one I know talks about these things, so I am pretty much in the dark until everything is over. Damn.
The author of the 3arabawy blog, Hossam Al-Hamalawy, also says that recently a lot of activists and citizens have been thrown out of their fourth floor residences by police officers. I live on the fourth floor. Shit.
Two bad words in one blog.
I just added a new blog, called 3arabawy (don't pronounce the "3" please, it is standing in for a letter that we don't have in English). Pretty good, written by an Egyptian Marxist, mostly in English. Finally, some different thinking. There is a good photographic essay about the Mahalla Intifada, the April 6th, 2008, uprising which started in the burb of Mahalla (close to Alex) and touched of a general strike across the country for higher wages... check it out here.
Also recently here in Alexandria, a bunch of Muslim Brotherhood folks were arrested after Egypt claimed that Hezbollah was infiltrating Egypt and getting arms to Gaza through Egypt. Unfortunately, I can't follow the news so well, and no one I know talks about these things, so I am pretty much in the dark until everything is over. Damn.
The author of the 3arabawy blog, Hossam Al-Hamalawy, also says that recently a lot of activists and citizens have been thrown out of their fourth floor residences by police officers. I live on the fourth floor. Shit.
Two bad words in one blog.
Tuesday, May 26, 2009
Sri Lanka, déjà vu...
Since before the "victory" over the Tigers in Sri Lanka, I've been feeling constantly nauseated with the amount of pro-military propaganda that is being spread all over the world. People who talked about peace before decided to throw all that talk away and salute the Sri Lankan flag and bend over to the Sri Lankan military.
But we all know that in times of crises, people act strange and usually are overcome by the desire to find a quick solution. I'm not going to get into an analysis of which side was right here. What I do find troubling is how Sri Lanka was able to ignore the demands of the UN (hypocritical though the UN may be) and simply continue blasting away. The government won, but at a huge human cost.
Of course, Obama afterwards sent congratulations to Rajapakse and gang. It's a clear message that, "Shit, it was a little uncomfortable having all that blood on our hands, but good job! You did what we're trying to do!" I imagine that the US and others are preparing their speeches for Pakistan, lamenting the impending humanitarian catastrophe, but openly funding the war and secretly hoping that the Swat would just sink into the Earth.
What if Uribe decided to just blow up the entire southern third of Colombia? Or the world decided that piracy in Somalia was costing more to their economies that dropping a nuclear bomb on Puntland? Actually, it seems that now Somalia is asking for help to destroy Al-Shabaab, who is about to overtake the country. Doesn't it seem like Obama is "suddenly" running out of patience with North Korea? It just seems like we've headed down the wrong road, and that under the Bush-Obama presidency, the power of the sword will overcome the power of the pen.
Speaking of Obama's two-facedness, check out Carmen Andrea Rivera interviewing John Lindsay-Poland (yeah for people with three names!) about the fine-tuning of Plan Colombia on KPFA: http://www.kpfa.org/archive/id/51147 (starting at minute 15).
But we all know that in times of crises, people act strange and usually are overcome by the desire to find a quick solution. I'm not going to get into an analysis of which side was right here. What I do find troubling is how Sri Lanka was able to ignore the demands of the UN (hypocritical though the UN may be) and simply continue blasting away. The government won, but at a huge human cost.
Of course, Obama afterwards sent congratulations to Rajapakse and gang. It's a clear message that, "Shit, it was a little uncomfortable having all that blood on our hands, but good job! You did what we're trying to do!" I imagine that the US and others are preparing their speeches for Pakistan, lamenting the impending humanitarian catastrophe, but openly funding the war and secretly hoping that the Swat would just sink into the Earth.
What if Uribe decided to just blow up the entire southern third of Colombia? Or the world decided that piracy in Somalia was costing more to their economies that dropping a nuclear bomb on Puntland? Actually, it seems that now Somalia is asking for help to destroy Al-Shabaab, who is about to overtake the country. Doesn't it seem like Obama is "suddenly" running out of patience with North Korea? It just seems like we've headed down the wrong road, and that under the Bush-Obama presidency, the power of the sword will overcome the power of the pen.
Speaking of Obama's two-facedness, check out Carmen Andrea Rivera interviewing John Lindsay-Poland (yeah for people with three names!) about the fine-tuning of Plan Colombia on KPFA: http://www.kpfa.org/archive/id/51147 (starting at minute 15).
Saturday, May 9, 2009
Close the SOA... in Arabic!
Since someone said that my last three entries have been sort of childish, I'll write a more serious entry. This is a really bad upload (from a mobile phone... not mine, ok!) of my first presentation in Arabic... about the SOA! yeah!! The audience (5 people) was really interested and wanted to know more... maybe it's time to start translating the SOAW website into Arabic! ;)
Try to listen for the words "imperialism" (لأمبريالية) and "dictatorships" (الدكتاتوريات). hehe.
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